A Spaceman

Chapter 22--Being Human

"Soren, sweet heart, these are lovely biscuits, that are really good for you. Grandma got them just for you and me, don't you want to try one with me?" Tess asks, sitting across the floor from her little boy. He is looking curiously at her through those odd goggles, not accepting the food. She is totally focused on him and getting him to eat.

She has barely looked around the apartment or done a thing other than sit on the floor with him, trying to feed him the food I offered her. I was skeptical before, when they told me he was malnourished and unkept. Now I see that he was kept better than anybody else could have. She works hard with him, she is the only one he responds to, and she is remarkably strong. So young. Her face is fresh and pure like a child's and her hair so dark and long and lovely. She could be pretty. But there is pain in her face. Her hair uncombed, her fingernails practically short. Her hips widened from childbearing, And some fierce knowledge in her eyes. Somehow I sense, some forbidden knowledge that she somehow gained in the getting of her child. Innocence lost at such a young age? I do not know what this thing was that had given her the steely look but she had it. And I like her for it.

I realize I am standing here holding the tin of biscuits, special child protein things that I got because I thought kids liked them like it said on the tin. I realize I am standing there looking at my daughter for the first time and being a mother, and watching her be a mother. And she is a good one. She does wonders with him. He grins as she eats half the biscuit then he eats his half. Then he holds out his hands for more.

"See? Not bad," she says, smiling in relief, handing him another. I couldn't get him to eat a thing but a piece of cake since having gotten him over twelve hours ago. The nurses who had been watching him had said as much the same. And they blamed her for not feeding him. She was the only one who got him to eat.

He smiles and gobbles it up, holding out his hand for more. She gives it to him, and this one he breaks in half to feed a bit to his little lizard, which scurried out from under the sofa.

"Cinder doesn't need biscuits he can eat bugs-----I'm sorry, that's my pet lizard, do you mind?" she asks, finally seeming to remember me.

"Oh—no, not at all," I say, shaking my head.

"I say mine, he's Soren's now, they talk to each other all the time, he's twice as good at it as I ever was," she says, shaking her head.

"Where'd you get him?" I ask.

"My dad gave him to me, he could talk to them as well," she says, glancing down at the floor at the mention of him, "You said they didn't tell you anything. Do you know who my dad is?"

"Yeah. I mean---not until yesterday. One of the police officers told me, he's been very kind, you'll like him I think---but ah---he, he told me, said I had a right to know, might make it easier on you and me," I stumble.

"Good for him. Yeah, so, sorry you had to find out so late you gave birth to Titus Card's child," she says, bitterly.

"It's hardly your fault he's your dad, anymore than it is mine," I say, for the first time believing it, "I want you to know, I don't care. I don't see that, I don't think that of you. You're as much mine as you are his."

"He's not all that bad of a guy. Not to me anyway. Except, he'd lie to people, as like, a religion, just to do it. He'd lie to me, and tell me to do the same to him, don't get me wrong. That's the overwhelmingly redeeming thing about him, if you can redeem the devil. He'd have you do to him exactly what he does to you. except nobody can hurt him like he hurts everyone else, he's that good at it," she says, very seriously, "But that's why---like I said---I want to tell the truth to people. Because I don't want to be anything like him."
"I don't think you are, I see the way you care for your son, you have a great capacity for love," I say, sitting down slowly on the sofa near her.